


I'm Bleeding out for You

by SummerLeighWind



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Nightmares, Reincarnation, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-12 16:30:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerLeighWind/pseuds/SummerLeighWind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What was the dream about Karkat?" Kanaya inquires. Curling away, Karkat shrugs his shoulders at her and answers tiredly, "Things." Taking a seat beside him; her fingers never stop their ministrations. "What sort of things?" Turning his head so he can stare right into his fellow trolls gaze, he sees his desolate, exhausted eyes in her own. "Of things no one should know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'm Bleeding out for You

Sometimes, (always these days) he dreams of places and people he doesn't know;  _shouldn't_ know. But, if there's one thing he knows, it's he's always been different. Sometimes, he dreams of cool arms and lilting songs, other times, one blue eye and one red squinted in a smile and obnoxious laughter, a lot of the time, he dreams of purring and a mane of thick hair draped over a bare back and a few times, he's dreamed of an arrow soaring through the air and explosive pain in his side. He knows others don't dream like him; don't make themselves sick wondering if what they see isn't  _real_ , don't force themselves to pace and fuss to keep sleep at bay, don't fear sleeping.

Face harshening its' perpetual scowl, Karkat wriggles in sleep; trying and failing to avoid the life  _that's not his._ Scrabbling for perch in the whirlwind of colors and sounds, Karkat screams as nigh-terrors overcome him...

_"Hush wriggler, they are just dreams." A voice soothes, fingers running through his unruly hair and cooling his hot face._

_"No..no mother, I don't think they are..." He whispers fervently back, but the older hand pushes him back to his pile._

_"Sleep little grub, all will be well in the evening." She urges, squinting up through bleary eyes, he catches sight of jade-green eyes identical to ones he knows and frowns._

_"...It's real, it_ could  _be, mother." He sighs, unconsciousness taking him down into his mind's shadowed corridors._

_XxX_

_"I've dreamt of a world where blood can be blood and all are equal!" He finishes in one grand climax, bringing cheers and awe from those listening. Grinning in satisfaction he steps away from the ledge to nearly run into his rod-thin moirail, "Ah!" He exclaims, "I almost didn't see you there!" He laughs, looking up into the thin face of his fellow troll (would he look this way if was given a chance to grow up?)._

_The yellow-blood's face is dark and frowning. "Do you truly believe everything you preach?"_

_Taken back, he blinks up at the other. "Would I say it if I didn't?" He asks._

_The thin face looks away, "Trolls say a lot of things they don't mean."_

_Reaching out to his moirail and gripping his arm in a comforting hold, he whispers, "Not_ me _." The yellow-blood looks at him then, looks at him so hard he feels himself wanting to resist and attack, but he controls himself and takes it all with the gentlest of smiles._

_Slowly, a smile-brighter than his own-takes over his fellow troll's face. "I believe you." He says._

_Grinning at the taller, he keeps his hand on the yellow-blood's arm and leads him towards his mother and_ her _._

_XxX_

_Side by side, bare of all with only a blanket to cover them; he turns his head to look at an achingly familiar face. "I want you with me forever, you know that right?" He asks of the olive-blood._

_She smiles a smile like a cat with it's cream and snuggles closer to his side. "Of course I do!" She exclaims, a little frown starts between her brow. "But what_ is _this_ _? Matespritship? Moirails of some sort?" She inquires._

_Taking up her delicately manicure hand, he kisses it. "Something better than either of those, I think." He replies grinning at her._

_Her eyes alight with something amazing. "What will we call it then?" She asks._

_Leaning in so their bodies mesh together as one, he whispers into her mane of black hair; "Love, this is **love.** "_

_She's quiet for a time, letting his hands work through her tangles and purring occasionally. Tilting her face so she can capture his lip in a kiss, she murmurs, "I like it, **love** , it captures everything; doesn't it?"'_

_Smiling at her, he nods. "It does." He agrees. Fingers linking, the two of them take strength in each other's company as they wait for the sun's setting._

_XxX_

_The whistle of an arrow cuts through the jeers, cheers and wails; he knows it's coming and he tenses praying that it will end swiftly. When it hits him, it's flaming pain; near unbearable, but, then he's dragged down into darkness._

_When he awakes next, nothing's the same and everything's jumbled within his mind._

He wakes up screaming, screaming so loud he doesn't even notice he's not alone until Kanaya's arms are keeping him from clawing out his eyes.

"Karkat? Karkat what's wrong?" She begs him, frowning as he harshly pulls away and into a tiny ball (can't let her see the tears-not anymore than she has-anyway).

"'m fine." He growls, "What the fuck are you doing here anyway?" He demands.

Upset, the jade-blood mutters, "You _asked_ me to come see you, remember?"

Head spinning and fuzzy with echoes of dreams (but, they  _can't_ be) he vaguely recalls such a request. "Right, yeah," he sighs.

Cool fingers coming to comb back his hair from his forehead, Karkat's reminded of another set of hands-older ones-and with a sigh, he sinks into the feeling. "What was the dream about Karkat?" Kanaya inquires.

Curling away, Karkat shrugs his shoulders at her and answers tiredly, "Things."

Taking a seat beside him; her fingers never stop their ministrations. "What sort of things?"

Turning his head so he can stare right into his fellow trolls gaze, he sees his desolate, exhausted eyes in her own. "Of things no one should know." He utters.

Her scratching stops, but arms come to hold him and he wraps his own around her and hopes he can spare her anymore pain (and the other her too).

 


	2. And What's Right is Wrong

He wakes up. Casting his gaze around his shadowed room, Kankri wonders what possibly could be wrong when everything's right where it should be and everything is as it should be. Tongue running across his sharp teeth, he struggles to remember the dream he just had; it shouldn't be so hard... A hand coming to run through his hair he realizes it's slick with sweat.

Sighing, he thinks on how this isn't the first time this has happened; just...waking up like something's wrong when nothing is. Closing his eyes, in a rare show of silence, Kankri clenches his jaw closed and begins to wrack the very back of his mind. He filters through his thoughts and calms them down until he's reached a meditative state and with slowly dawning horror he begins to make out two different trolls; but, these trolls _aren't_ that different, they are _him_.

One's a boy, hardly past his sixth sweep, Kankri would like to say. His face is an almost trigger-worthy glower and in his hands he clutches two blood-stained sickles. Gasping, Kankri wonders what has happened to this child; what made him pick up those weapons? What put that scowl on his face? His appearance changes abruptly, the frown now gone replaces with a look of horror and he drops to the floor; sickles abandoned behind him. He cradles someone, someone invisible to Kankri; yet his hands and shirt stain with a heart-sickening green. He reaches to help the boy; however, as he comes to the boy, he's evaporates back into the darkness of his mind.

Soon a man short and compact comes to him, he's what Kankri's slowly becoming; but he wears a cloak with the hood pulled well over his face. It hide everything but his familiar teeth and his glowing red eyes. Looking at him, Kankri wonders why he hides his face, where is he from that he needs to hide? Glancing him over, he sees no weapon and soon, the hood falls away for a smile to eclipse his face. He spreads his hand wide as if to inspire and his lips move so fluently, but Kankri (much to his frustration) can't hear a word. His body jerks suddenly, instead of a happy, proud, man, he's a beaten man chained up by his wrists. His mouth opens in a scream and for a moment, Kankri wonders if he could ever look like that, but, that's before he realizes why he's screaming-an arrow-straight into his side. Kankri yelps and scrambles to yank the arrow from his side, but before he can even touch it; the man's gone in a haze back to whence he came.

Coming back to himself and his comfortable life, Kankri looks around and wonders, for the first time, if everything won't always be like this. Desperately he wants to tell someone- _anyone_ -have them tell him he's just being silly, that it was just a nightmare; but, no one wants to talk to him these days (and who's fault is that?). Somehow, he thinks this is some kind of punishment, he know something no one else does, but be incapable of doing _anything._ Worrying his lip to the point of splitting it open an unusually bitter smile comes to Kankri's face. "Well, you just deserve it, don't you? You pampered brat." He murmurs to himself.

* * *

Days later, when someone finally picks up on his lackluster rants and speeches; it's Porrim Maryam who asks the question. "Is everything alright Kankri?"

Kankri quiets for a moment, he looks at her and then the few gathered around. Taking a breath he whispers, "I don't know."

This draws a great deal of attention, because rarely is there anything Kankri Vantas doesn't know or have an opinion on. "What do you mean Kankri?" Cronus Ampora demands, glaring at him.

Looking away Kankri can only shake his head. "I really don't know," he sighs.

More directly, Porrim puts a hand on his shoulder and asks gently. " _What_ don't you know Kankri?"

Looking in her jade eyes and then to the floor, he can only whisper, "I don't know what happens to _us_ ," hands fisting, he utters, "To _any_ of us."

They _look_ at him then, in that uncomfortable, uncomprehending way. Squeezing his shoulder, Porrim says, "None of us know, we can't see the future."

Kankri chuckles weakly at this. "Yeah, I guess we can't, can we?" He agrees looking at all of their edgy faces knowing their more scared of what _he_ knows and than what they _don't_ know.

Taking a breath, Kankri lets it all settle in corner of his mind that really isn't all that far away. He needs to pretend like everything's okay, that he doesn't _know_ things; and sometimes, if he dreams of the murdered man and weeping boy? Well, no one needs to know.


	3. And I Close my Eyes

His mother would tell him when he was older that he had been a dreamy sort of grub and a quiet sort of wriggler-not the empty kind, but the thoughtful kind, she would assure-or, he was when he didn't have his _dreams_ (he always thought they were real, after all, only memories are so vivid). He can remember his first dream, he couldn't have been more than two or three sweeps, a wriggler barely out of his grubhood. It should have been any normal dawn, him snuggling down in his pile and Dolorosa making sure he was packed tight for the morning to come. Kisses and hugs, lullabies and stories (anything to put off sleep, he wonders some days if it didn't have to do with the dreams) and then, _finally_ his big orb eyes close and he slips into the dark cradle of sleep.

He doesn't even realize at first it's not a dream-not until he begins to recognize people-and when he _does_ , oh wriggler, nothing could have stopped him from screaming. Mother comes, she soothes and tells and promises, but none of it matters in the face of these dreams. Mainly because they keep stealing sleep and mother's fretting more these days. To ease her fear and his own, he decides he can't fear them anymore. Going to sleep one night, he lays down in his pile in determination and falls into the darkness's cradle with a solid resolve of bravery and desperate need for understanding and rest.

He wakes up as Kankri, a troll who talks non-stop and wears a sweater as red as his candy-red blood. He's friends with a jade-blood who looks a lot like mother-minus the piercings-he also hangs out with a teal-blood girl who talks in a really funny and neat way and _she's_ friends with a fuchsia-blood who's friends with a blue-blood who's friends with...and so on, it may not seem so amazing to anyone else; but, to a little outcast like him? It means the world _can_ be different, no one has to be culled, no one has to be lesser, no one has to be slaves or queens, they could all be-no _can_ be friends and it feels so beautiful and perfect, he wonders why no one has ever tried before.

When he tells mother of his plan to teach the people of Alternia of this way of life, she looks at him for a long time.

"You are certain?" She asks.

"More than anything else mother." He tells her.

"It's dangerous." Mother reminds him.

"Being alive is dangerous, mother." He counters.

She sighs then, fingers toying with the cape she's been stitching for him for the last perigee. "I don't want you to get hurt." She whispers.

Putting a hand on hers, he tells her what he knows to be self-evident. "I'll be hurt more if you don't trust or let me mother." He explains.

Her Jade eyes meet his immature dark eyes and she hugs him fiercely. "My wriggler, my son, _mine_ , I fear I'd be lost without you." She murmurs.

Hugging her back, he answers in kind. "My mother, I would be dead without you." She cries jade on him, he loves her more for it.

"You have to promise me you won't get caught." She demands.

"I'll try mother." He promises earnestly.

Handing him the little cloak, she looks at him sadly. "I can't hope for much else, can I?"

Grinning, he shakes his head and chirps. "Nope!"

The smile she crack relieves him of any more doubts. "How did I ever find myself a wriggler like you?" She says it in a breath and he knows he doesn't need to give her an answer, just being there is enough.

* * *

He wakes up with a gasp. "Are you alright?" A voice yawns, womanly body pressing into his.

Sitting up shaking and sweating, he bobs his head. "I'm fine my Disciple."

Breasts pressing against his chest and arms winding around his body, she implores in a sleepy tone. "Just what did you see my Signless?"

He looks away troubled into the coming dawn. "It was different," he starts. She purrs and waits for him to continue, "It wasn't of Beforus this time...but of Alternia."

Blinking olive up at him, she tilts her head. "Oh? What did you see."

He shakes his head, lips tight and unyielding. "I'm not sure we're going to win."

"Why not? Don't tell me you're doubting yourself Signless, you're _amazing_ you inspire so many and-" He cuts her off with a gentle hand to her lovely lips.

"I may, but that's not a recipe for victory...I-" he puckers his lips, "Just don't ever think I don't love you, okay?"

Cuddling in his side, she smiles dreamily at him. "Of course, I'll always know."

Settling back down into their pile, he hugs her close and feels his eyes drifting close. "Good, I was afraid.."

Kissing his temple, the Disciple mumbles, "Dont' be."

He falls asleep and the next time he wakes he'll be chained and dragged to his death.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoa, props to you who can write Homestuck any day of the week; this stuff's hard. On that note this (probably) will be my only fic for this fandom.


End file.
